But the most bitter among all the critics of Plato, is Herakleitus--author of the Allegoriæ Homericæ. Herakleitus repels, as unjust and calumnious, the sentence of banishment pronounced by Plato against Homer, from whom all mental cultivation had been derived. He affirms, and tries to show, that the poems of Homer--which he admits to be full of immorality if literally understood--had an allegorical meaning. He blames Plato for not having perceived this; and denounces him still more severely for the character of his own writings--[Greek: e)r)r(i/phthô de\ kai\ Pla/tôn o( ko/lax, O(mê/rou sukopha/ntês--Tou\s de\ Pla/tônos dialo/gous, a)/nô kai\ ka/tô paidikoi\ kathubri/zousin e)/rôtes, ou)damou= de ou)chi tê=s a)r)r(e/nos e)pithumi/as mesto/s e)stin o( a)nê/r] (Herakl. All. Hom., c. 4-74, ed. Mehler, Leiden, 1851).] [Footnote 4: Plato, Sympos. 182 C. The proceedings of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, which illustrate this feeling, are recounted by Thucydides, vi. 54-57. These two citizens were gratefully recollected and extensively admired by the Athenian public.] [Side-note: Eros, considered as the great stimulus to improving philosophical communion. Personal Beauty, the great point of approximation between the world of sense and the world of Ideas. Gradual generalisation of the sentiment.] Especially to Plato, who combined erotic and poetical imagination with Sokratic dialectics and generalising theory--this passion presented itself in the light of a stimulus introductory to the work of philosophy--an impulse at first impetuous and undistinguishing, but afterwards regulated towards improving communion and colloquy with an improvable youth. Personal beauty (this is[5] the remarkable doctrine of Plato in the Phædrus) is the main point of visible resemblance between the world of sense and the world of Ideas: the Idea of Beauty has a brilliant representative of itself among concrete objects--the Ideas of Justice and Temperance have none. The contemplation of a beautiful youth, and the vehement emotion accompanying it, was the only way of reviving in the soul the Idea of Beauty which it had seen in its antecedent stage of existence. This was the first stage through which every philosopher must pass; but the emotion of love thus raised, became gradually in the better minds both expanded and purified. The lover did not merely admire the person, but also contracted the strongest sympathy with the feelings and character, of the beloved youth: delighting to recognise and promote in him all manifestations of mental beauty which were in harmony with the physical, so as to raise him to the greatest attainable perfection of human nature. The original sentiment of admiration, having been thus first transferred by association from beauty in the person to beauty in the mind and character, became gradually still farther generalised; so that beauty was perceived not as exclusively specialised in any one individual, but as invested in all